Council Taps $1000 for Armenia, Calls on U.N. to Send Observers

The City Council last night voted to continue aiding earthquake victims in Cambridge's sister city of Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia.

It agreed to donate $1000 to the relief effort, and, in two separate resolutions, decried Azerbaijani officials' conduct towards Armenian nationals.

Duehay, who is coordinating the relief fund-raising effort, said after the meeting that he was trying to get city schools and businesses to donate money and medical supplies.

The drastic situation in Armenia forces Cambridge into activities not typical of sister city relations, Duehay said. For example, he said, next Tuesday the city will sponsor a six-hour telethon on cable television to raise money for medical supplies.

"The notion of a sister city is to develop educational and cultural kinds of exchanges," he said. "But when a disaster like this happens, we've got to adopt a new mode for this type of relationship."

Duehay also praised Harvard's Office of Government and Community Affairs, which yesterday donated $1000 to the relief fund, Duehay said. But he said that Harvard's upcoming vacation would probably bring a halt to Harvard's involvement for several weeks.

The Council's two other resolutions on Armenia urged the Soviet government to halt the reportedly widespread violence towards Armenians.

The first of the measures, sponsored by Councillors Sheila T. Russell and William H. Walsh, cited several attacks on Armenians in the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan, and noted that at least three Armenians had been killed in Yerevan itself.

"Through carefully crafted plans of plunder, arson, deportation and personal assault, the Azerbaijani government officials are raping the republic; this, if not with the tacit approval, at least with the tranquil acceptance, of Soviet leadership and Soviet troops," the order read.

The order also called on Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev to "take quick and appropriate steps to stop the tide of violence against the Armenians," and asked that a copy of the order be transmitted to Gorbachev.

A second, more strongly worded order, sponsored by Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci and Councillors Francis H. Duehay '55 and Alice K. Wolf also decried the violence and called on the United Nations to send a team of impartial observers to the Soviet Armenian and Azerbaijani Republics.

Volunteer Virginia Guveyan said she collected $274 in pledges for the Cambridge-Yerevan Sister City Association Armenian Relief fund by answering a city-sponsored hotline yesterday afternoon. She said commitments ranged between $10 and $100.

Guveyan said city administrators asked her to answer the line for three weeks, adding that she planned to solicit contributions as well. Yesterday she sat at a table in the City Hall lobby that she said several people mistook for an information desk, but she said posters and signs are on the way to make her station more permanent.